Mongols on the Moskva

A sense of surprise is a key to turning real events into convincing fiction

By

Allan Mallinson

Updated Feb. 11, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

The writer of historical fiction treads a perilous path, and at the end of it his reward is unlikely to be great acclaim. As Patrick O'Brian lamented: "The historical novel, as I learnt with some concern after I had written two or three, belongs to a despised genre." Even calling it a genre is something of an overstatement, since there is no settled definition of what constitutes "historical fiction."

Empire of Silver By Conn Iggulden Bantam, 288 pages, $26

The fifth edition of the Oxford Companion to English Literature defined it as "often containing not only fictional but historical people and/or events," adding that "in serious work there is a real attempt at accuracy and credibility" (a sideswipe perhaps at bodice- rippers). Eric Anderson, a Walter Scott expert and former Eton headmaster, did a bit better in the London Spectator some years ago, noting that "the classic historical novel—as concocted by Walter Scott and perfected by Tolstoy—gives the reader an unexpected viewpoint from which to witness a great historical moment. . . . Fictional characters with fictional relation ships are the centre of attention, but they weave in and out of the company of historical figures and take part in great events." The real art of historical fiction, then, lies in inserting fictional characters credibly into the flow of actual history. If the author gets it right—does not, so to speak, make the river flow uphill—the result can be enlightening as well as entertaining.

ENLARGE

Robert Hunt

Some authors take pains to distance their work from the category. Sebastian Faulks, for example, claims somewhat disdainfully that "Birdsong" (1993), set largely during World War I, is not a historical novel. Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winner "Wolf Hall" (2009), set in the court of Henry VIII, was marketed assiduously as literary fiction even though it shares many characteristics of books that award-givers sneer at.

Conn Iggulden is an author with no such compunctions. Probably best known in America as the co-author (with his brother) of "The Dangerous Book for Boys," he has for some years made a living writing historical tales. Even his name somehow conjures up the time of "here be dragons" and regions beyond the pale of elegant society.

"Empire of Silver" (Dela corte, 388 pages, $26) is the fourth book in Mr. Iggulden's "epic story" (as his publishers put it) of the Mongol Khan dynasty, which reached its peak 250 years before Columbus discovered America. These are not books in O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin mold, where the heroes, when not fighting, are playing the violin and the cello and talking natural philosophy. Wolves, bows and bone are the stuff of Mr. Iggulden's books—as the titles alone indicate: "Wolf of the Plains" ("Birth of an Empire" in the U.S.), "Lords of the Bow" and "Bones of the Hill."

Every historical novelist faces a steady temptation to make readers better connect with the men and women of an earlier day by projecting contemporary attitudes onto them. By setting his tales in the remote past, though, Mr. Iggulden has made things easier for himself. The traditional hunting grounds for British historical novelists—World War I, Victorian England, the Napoleonic Wars—are filled with original material against which everything can be measured for verisimilitude. Go back to the Dark Ages and the material is less constricting.

We get into the primitive life of the Mongol plains on page one: "Batu frowned to himself at the thought of the day he had spent digging a toilet pit for his mother. He had been as excited as a child when he showed the results of his labor. She had merely shrugged, saying she was too old to go so far in the night, when good ground was all around her. She was 36 years old, already broken by sickness and the years passing." An old woman at 36—a sharp reminder of how, as L.P. Hartley put it, "the past is a foreign country." Mr. Iggulden is consistently good at this sort of squalor.

His story begins in the aftermath of the death of Genghis Khan, during the struggle for succession on the steppes of Central Asia. Batu's father was a Mongol dissident, murdered because he would not bend to the Khan's will. Batu is determined to claw back his own status by becoming a warrior. Yet Batu does not so much "weave in and out of the company of historical figures" (to use Eric Anderson's phrase) as provide a sort of point of continuity as the years pass and the narrative sweeps east and west. Indeed, much of the narrative is simply a fictionalized portrayal of real people, rather than a realistic account of fictional ones.

Mr. Iggulden, for instance, creates a chilling atmosphere in the march westward of the disciplined but savage military machine under Tsubodai, one of the Mongols' best generals and a master of siege warfare. The tension mounts as the Mongol hordes advance into Kievan Rus, a civilized place (certainly by the standards of the Mongols) steeped in the tradition of the Orthodox church. The fall of Moscow is inevitable—it actually happened—but still I found myself saying repeatedly, "please, no." (The contemporary resonance of attacks on our own capitals, out of the empty spaces of the east, is hard to ignore.) Mr. Iggulden does the hacking and spearing uncommonly well, but, crucially, he doesn't overdo it.

One thing he doesn't do much is detail. There is, after all, a lot of action to cover in such an epic tale and not much space for description in a book of 400 pages. When description comes, therefore, it ought to be apt and accurate as well as concise, and sometimes Mr. Iggulden stumbles. Larks, for example, do not sing from treetops but in the sky; eagles properly have talons, not claws; the color dun is not red-brown; horses do not whinny, squeal or scream in pain but in fear or to call to others. Sometimes Mr. Iggulden also falters in historical accuracy: Moscow had many basilicas, not cathedrals, and in the 13th century the basilicas would not have had pews. Mr. Iggulden's editors should have also known that the nobiliary particle "von" is not capitalized.

Mr. Iggulden's prose is terse; he is no stylist. But neither, one supposes, were the Mongols. The rhythm is that of the steam hammer. Conversations are largely devoid of subordinate clauses. These were, after all, men with a mission—in the main, slaughter, rape and pillage. The writing does, however, make for a pacey if remorseless read, and the book has much to teach about a time and a people long shrouded in legend (much, apparently, deserved). But it contains too few surprises. In short, this is alpha-male fiction, red in tooth and claw. If, however, like Aubrey and Maturin (and Patrick O'Brian), you prefer time for a breath and an occasional game of whist in between battles, "Empire of Silver" is probably not for you.

As there is no settled definition of what constitutes "historical fiction," there can be no sure prescription for its writing. Those with an inclination to write in the "despised genre" might therefore find it worth considering that the authors who "win prizes"— such as Walter Scott and Tolstoy—are those who give the reader Eric Anderson's "unexpected viewpoint from which to witness a great historical moment." Mr. Iggulden, for all his martial virtues, too rarely upends our expectations.

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